I Developed a Snake Phobia After My Sexual Assault —
Here's How I Faced It

To anyone unfamiliar with exposure therapy, it would have been a strange scene. My husband stood across the room from me, holding a photo of a tiny snake as I squinted at it. I could barely make out what it was.

Calm, I told myself before panic could take over, a direction I used to relax my whole body.

The snake was barely bigger than an earthworm, curled in the palm of someone’s hand. “Anxiety level is two,” I reported. “You can take a step closer.”

Justin stepped toward me and the snake’s head came into focus. Calm, I told myself again. “Anxiety is at a three.” He took one more step.

The snake was mint green and terra cotta, dwarfed by the hand in which it was coiled. “My anxiety is a four,” I said. “We should stop.” With anxiety any higher than a four, I was in danger of re-traumatizing myself.

My trauma is from one sunny afternoon during college, when I saw a snake near my foot as I braced for a kiss I didn’t want from a person who soon after sexually assaulted me. That moment lodged itself in my psyche, and soon, I associated snakes with the feeling of being trapped — of being helpless and unable to escape — that characterized my relationship with my attacker. The trauma grew every time I saw another snake, my body becoming a memorial of an event long after I wanted to forget it.

The trauma grew every time I saw another snake

I’ve been in exposure therapy for ophidiophobia, or fear of snakes, for almost a year, and it was only a few months ago that I became able to look at a picture of a tiny snake from a few feet away. A year ago I couldn’t even hear the word “snake” without panicking. When people talked about snakes near me, my heartbeat sped up; my breathing grew shallow and fast. Although I was only recently diagnosed with PTSD, I have spent years on various therapists’ couches, talking and talking about a fear that never seemed to lessen.

The way I developed mine may be unique, but a fear of snakes is one of the most common phobias. Polling suggests that perhaps half of Americans are afraid of them, and that they’re widely considered the most terrifying animal. On an episode of NPR’s Invisibilia, host Lulu Miller explained what, exactly, is terrifying about a snake: “The best that people could articulate was that the movement didn’t make sense.”

The first snake I saw in the wild after my assault was a rattler, draped like a shadow up a stone staircase at my best friend’s parents’ house. I heard the warning rattle before I saw it. What I remember next is my best friend putting my feet in a bucket of ice water and holding my face to her chest, telling me I was safe. As the feeling returned to my body, I felt sore; I had suffered a panic attack.

It was worse the next time, when I saw a harmless snake on a walk in New Hampshire. The fear left me frozen in the middle of the street, unable to make myself move, as though my brain had disconnected from my legs.

This pattern continued until last summer, when Justin and I were with our dog at a park near our home in California and we passed a big, brown gopher snake. I screamed. I felt paralyzed, sure this time I wouldn’t survive the terror. Justin guided me past the snake and out the gate, his whole body wrapped around mine as I slapped at myself uncontrollably, bruising my chest and upper arms. In the car, Justin held my face and made me breathe slowly with him until my body relaxed.

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In the weeks after that, I could barely walk on sidewalks as I scanned them for sticks or other long, thin objects that could spring to life and slither towards me. I saw snakes every night as I went to sleep, and woke up gasping from dreams I couldn’t remember. If a friend invited me hiking, something I used to love to do, I lied about why I couldn’t make it to avoid the shame I felt at my own fear. Explaining my phobia encouraged people to tell me about their own worst snake experiences, which sent me into a tailspin. It felt like an invisible disability. Justin and I both agreed that my fear of snakes was controlling our lives, and that I needed real help — and soon.

It felt like an invisible disability

I researched options that ranged from hypnosis, in which I would hope for someone else to change my responses while I lay in a trance, to intensive luxury residential treatment centers, where I’d fork over my annual salary for a month of mindfulness. Ultimately, because my insurance would cover it, I made an appointment for exposure therapy, a conditioning that exposes patients, little by little, to feared stimuli while teaching them to cope with their anxiety. Not long before, I couldn’t have imagined choosing to expose myself to my biggest fear, but I was desperate.

I began to dig into the research on exposure therapy. During a traumatic experience, the brain stem throws the body into a reactive mode, effectively shutting down any non-essential functions. Stress hormones soaring, and we fight, flee, or, in my case, freeze. For most people, as soon as the immediate threat stops, the nervous system begins restoring normal hormone levels, and the brain shifts back to normal. Our rational brain — the part that tells us, for example, that a given snake isn’t poisonous — kicks in.

Because of my PTSD, though, when I see a snake, the shift from reacting to responding never happens. I am still reacting to the snake I saw over a decade ago as I felt myself lose control my own safety, as I said no to someone who didn’t listen. That snake was the beginning of my recurrent sensation of trying to escape and never being able to outrun the threat, of living in a constant loop of fear instead.

“You associated snakes with this feeling of danger,” my exposure therapist told me. “If you had seen someone walking by with pink hair, you might have been afraid of pink hair instead.” Exposure therapy has meant exposing myself, little by little, to snakes. I began by imagining them for a few weeks, then graduated to looking at a photo of a snake from across the room. I visited the spot I saw the snake in the dog park, telling myself Calm as I walked into a place I used to love but hadn’t visited since my encounter with the gopher snake.

Soon, I’ll go to the Natural History Museum, where there’s a stuffed snake, and eventually to a pet store to look at a snake in a glass cage. My therapy will be over when I can touch a snake, to prove that I have mastery over my phobia. I can choose where I touch it, and for how long — a symbol of my control over my fear after years of its hold on me.

And another step: It may sound silly, but this summer my therapist and I will practice screaming and running away from rubber snakes, which Justin will have to hide around the house to surprise me. I’ll be relearning the “flight” response that has escaped me when it comes to snakes.

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The choice to face my phobia has been the most powerful one I’ve ever made. I’ve been at the reins of my own recovery by learning to relax my body and face my memories, reshaping how they affect me now. I decide how far to push myself, and when I’ve had enough for the day — a decision that has taught me to check in on my own anxiety, and to be honest about what I can handle.

The choice to face my phobia has been the most powerful one I’ve ever
made

I know that I may never rid myself fully of my fear. But knowing how to control it will be enough. I’m learning to shift from reaction to response, to run away and scream instead of freezing. Exposure therapy is shining a light on the trauma I’d rather not face, but it’s also slowly allowing me to imagine a future where I enjoy a hike on a sunny day. I am relearning what it means to feel safe in the world, and in my own skin. Now, every time I imagine the thing I fear, I say Calm to myself. It’s a word that means I am okay, that I have the resources to take care of myself — that I’ve had them all along.